The Border of Paradise: A Novel (11 page)

Of course he didn’t understand. We didn’t understand each other except when we were touching, and neither one of us could crawl into the guts of the other. But the pain in my arm woke me.

I said, “Our baby does not want America food.”

“Our baby doesn’t. What does our baby want? Does our baby want Taiwan’s food?”

I nodded.

He tugged at his hair. I was sure that he would leave me. The lights continued to flicker. The air filled with late-night smoke. “All right,” he said. “Well, we’re not going to get it here.” He raised his hand for the check.

Our journey, once slow and meandering, became hurried as he drove to San Francisco, the Old Golden Mountain. I drank milk in the passenger seat to survive and filled the backseat with empty bottles that tumbled and clanked at sharp turns, but I did not vomit, and he only stopped at truck stops to buy himself burgers, which he ate one-handed with ketchup dripping down his palm while driving south. We went through the never-ending grasses, which were fields, and I dreamed hazy dreams of the boy growing and snarling inside of my belly.

David persuaded the owner of the Hotel Grande Royal to let us live in the penthouse for as long as we could pay. I never saw money change hands, but we stayed in room 333 until William slipped out of me, howling, on March 8, 1955, in the four-post bed.

Our room was as extravagant as the Nowaks’ brown stone house had been. A velvety parlor beside the bedroom, crammed with knickknacks—coral-colored crystal vases, tins filled with spiced potpourri. The same delicate, reflective surfaces all over, forming mirrors upon infinite mirrors. A pink chandelier. A grandfather clock that did not chime, but loomed in a corner with a grave face. The bed was its own marvel: four-poster, king-sized, with pillows piled atop layers of custard bedding. In that bed I could lie and look up at the tin ceiling, which yielded an
unfurled and floral universe. We spent more time in that bed than we did anywhere else in that suite, including the claw-footed tub, the chaise longue, or the white sofa in the parlor. I would not be surprised if, when the maids finally entered almost a year later and stripped the bed of its comforter and sheets, the women saw the shapes of our bodies burned into the mattress. Why leave? Why would we want to?

The Hotel Grande Royal was six blocks, David told me, from Chinatown. Despite our proximity, I refused to see that Oriental facsimile for fear of my heart and liver being seduced by the old dream. No, best to write down the names of the dishes on a scrap of paper and have my white husband go and bring things back for me. Best to have David bring me the dishes the baby craved: oily bags of sweet
for breakfast and
for lunch. The first thing that he brought back was a bamboo basket of soup dumplings, and, like a mutt, I took my basket of treats to the corner. With no concern about appearances, I sat on the chaise longue and lifted a saggy dumpling to my lips, barely getting the lukewarm
to my lips before it burst and spilled hot juice down my chin and into the space between my swelling breasts. My eyes dampened, then wept. My shoulders shook with joy. I devoured
for three weeks, and then I craved
, which took David three days to find; but the salt in those crumbs of fish on top of fried rice satisfied me more than that of any greasy paper boat of fries. David watched with fascination as I ate. He had eaten only street meats in Kaohsiung.